E X E C U T I V E S U M M A RY

Idera Helps
Industry
American Fidelity Assurance is a
leading provider of disability
insurance, supplemental medical
insurance, annuities, life insurance
and Section 125 administration.
Cut Database
Business Situation
The company's DBA staff was
Administration Time 50%
struggling with a constant stream of
new SQL Server applications, many
of which had critical performance As the number and size of SQL Server
requirements. Staff resources were applications expands at an exponential rate
not growing at the same rate, so
DBAs were pressed to keep up with within many companies, database administration
the higher database administration requirements also grow, stretching available
workload.
technical resources to the limit. What's needed
Business Scenario is a diagnostic and management tool that can
AFA Database Administrator Derrick
McNeill was looking for a tool to track critical SQL Server performance parameters
help him and other DBAs with and deliver alerts to database administrators
routine SQL Server monitoring. He
selected Idera's SQLdm because it (DBAs) whenever a problem arises, allowing
delivered in-depth SQL Server them to focus on proactive tasks rather than
performance monitoring and
functionality to help with database constantly monitoring for problems.
administration, yet was extremely
easy to configure and use.
American Fidelity Assurance (AFA), a leading insurance provider,
Benefits doubled the productivity of its DBA staff by implementing
With SQLdm, the DBAs could track Idera's SQL diagnostic manager (SQLdm). The product enables
the performance variables that they DBAs to rapidly diagnose and correct performance problems.
previously checked manually, as well Idera made it possible for the DBA team to focus almost 100
as several additional metrics they percent on true DBA work, eliminating the routine tasks that
rarely had time to review in the past. were occupying half of their time.
They now get an alert whenever
certain thresholds are exceeded.
SQLdm also provides reports that
track critical variables over time,
allowing them to stop problems
before they affect users. This
tracking and reporting on SQL
Server metrics saves essentially 50
percent of the DBAs' time previously
spent looking for problems.

Product 1
SQL diagnostic manager (SQLdm)

SQL diagnostic manager collects and
displays real-time diagnostic data covering
SQL Server, helping you quickly investigate
and correct database problems.
N E W A P P L I C AT I O N S S T R A I N D B A R E S O U R C E S
Just five years ago, almost all of AFA's applications ran on Software
AG's Adabas databases on a mainframe server. Since then, the
company has developed new applications and implemented new
purchased packages based on Microsoft SQL Server in a Windows
environment, including a document archiving and retrieval system,
customer relationship management system and check
reconciliation application. The company is also developing a
Section 125 administration system and a data warehouse, both
running on the popular Microsoft database.
Tom Thurston, AFA database administration manager, said these
new applications strained the programming team's capabilities
since most of the team's background was primarily in mainframe
databases. McNeill, who was hired because of his experience in
SQL Server administration, immediately began reviewing the
challenges faced by the firm.
"You need to look at a lot of different metrics to keep SQL Server
performing well," McNeill said. "In an organization like ours, with
many databases and relatively small number of DBAs, our
challenge was to collect all the in-depth information we needed
across all our databases. So, we had to focus on some key areas."
One of the first areas AFA looked at was index fragmentation and
reorganization status. Previously, they considered scheduling
reorganizations on a daily basis. Since most applications were
required to be up 24x7, however, they could not handle the
performance hit or use of DBA time. "As it was, we ended up
tracking fragmentation of just our most important databases, since
there just wasn't enough time each day to track all the databases,"
McNeill said. "In other cases, some data took a lot of time to
gather. For example, we knew that excessive page splits were also
causing performance problems.
However, little information was available upon which to base the
setting of the fillfactor. Ideally, the fillfactor should be based on the
ratio of updates to reads, with low update tables getting higher
fillfactors. But there was rarely time to track these statistics."
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SQL diagnostic manager provides
reorganization details and the ability to
reorganize fragmented table indexes on the
Reorganization Status window.
IDERA CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
"While SQLdm is already saving
large amounts of time and helping
us improve the user experience, we
feel that we are just scratching the
surface of its capabilities."
Tom Thurston, Database
Administration Manager,
American Fidelity Assurance
E VA L U AT I N G S Q L S E R V E R M A N A G E M E N T T O O L S
Thurston and McNeill examined a number of different SQL Server
management tools. McNeill said most had to be installed on SQL
Server itself. "Installing anything on a server is major surgery and I
was concerned that we would see a performance hit," he said.
"Idera's SQLdm was attractive because its tools could run from my
desktop workstation."
The company's DBAs began using SQLdm immediately to track
statistics important to maintaining SQL Server performance and
availability. For example, instead of manually tracking SQL Servers
for index fragmentation, DBAs set up SQLdm to automatically track
for fragmentation above a set level and then send an alert if a
threshold is reached. Having SQLdm automatically track
fragmentation offered a number of immediate benefits, including:
• By setting up the tool to automatically track fragmentation,
DBAs were able to track all databases, instead of just the most
important ones they previously managed.
• With a steady flow of information, the DBA team could achieve
an ideal balance between reorganizations and fragmentation.
Instead of reorganizing at set times, such as twice weekly, a
reorganization now only had to occur when necessary to
maintain set performance levels.
Future plans for AFA include taking advantage of the capability of
SQLdm to automatically run reorganization scripts.
IMPROVING PERFORMANCE BY OPTIMIZING
F I L L FA C T O R S
Further performance gains have been achieved by using SQLdm to
carefully track individual database usage so that their fillfactors can
be optimized. "We watch the number of inserts, updates, deletes
and reads for the tables to determine the best fillfactors,"
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C O N TA C T S
Idera Corporate Headquarters
802 Lovett Boulevard
Houston, TX USA 77006
Toll-free: 1.877.GO.IDERA
Phone: 713.523.4433
Fax: 713.862.5210
www.idera.com
Sales Information:
sales@idera.com
General Information:
info@idera.com
McNeill said. "For a table with many inserts, updates and deletes,
we might set the fillfactor to 75 percent. On the other hand, for a
table that gets very few writes but many reads, we would set the
fillfactor to 95 percent."
American Fidelity has seen significant performance improvements
by taking this approach. Optimizing fillfactors and eliminating
unnecessary indexes on one database made it possible to reduce
the index size from 24 to 14 gigabytes, which improved response
time by 20 percent.
I N T E G R AT I O N W I T H S Y S T E M S M A N A G E M E N T
SOLUTION
"SQLdm integrates well with NetIQ's AppManager Suite
(AppManager), which helps us manage the computing
infrastructure that could impact SQL Server performance,"
Thurston said. "Our network operations center uses AppManager
to manage physical hardware and the Windows 2000 environment.
Some of the diagnostics information provided by this tool is
important to us. Instead of asking them for the information, we
have configured AppManager to automatically deliver the relevant
reports and alerts into the SQLdm console. That way, we can
administer and monitor everything from a single interface.
"While SQLdm is already saving large amounts of time and helping
us to improve the user experience, we feel that we are just
scratching the surface of its capabilities. Our plan is to take
advantage of the ability of the diagnostic tools to automatically
take corrective actions, providing even greater time savings. For
example, we intend to automatically run reorganization routines
when index fragmentation reaches a certain level. Or if we are
running short on disk space a routine to truncate the transaction
log will be actuated. SQLdm is just what we need to manage more
databases without increasing our staff. It handles the routine tasks
and lets our skilled staff focus on those areas that require their
creative and technical skills."
Idera – a division of BBS Technologies. SQL diagnostic manager, SQLdm, Idera and the Idera Logo
are trademarks or registered trademarks of BBS Technologies or its subsidiaries in the United States
and other jurisdictions. All other company and product names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks of their respective companies.
© 2004 BBS Technologies, all rights reserved. CS10606AMFI MD 1003